Obesity is draining around €59 billion a year from EU member states' pockets in direct health care costs, but the overall economic impact could be as high as €118 to €236 billion, with rising childhood obesity auguring badly for the future.
The startling €59 billion figure - three times the size of Bulgaria's GDP and well over Brussels' €43 billion a year Common Agricultural Policy budget - is based on a May 2006 European Commission estimate that obesity costs the EU an average of 7 per...
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.